As the number of wireless cellular data communication devices continues to increase and as their data capabilities continue to be more and more heavily used, the demands on available infrastructure and frequencies continue to increase. The addition of infrastructure to meet demand is costly, and is becoming more and more difficult as unoccupied space suitable for placement of larger base stations diminishes. In addition, as saturation of available wireless communication frequencies approaches, addition of conventional infrastructure approaches a point of ineffectiveness.
In order to support the growing demand for data communication services, therefore, network operators are turning more and more to managing existing resources, particularly frequency resources, so as to increase the number of users served by the resources. One approach is to provide for the use of multiple carriers serving a single user device. For example, a larger base station might use a first carrier to serve its connected user devices, and various smaller base stations might be connected to one or another of the same user devices, with each of the smaller base stations using its own carrier to serve its connected devices, with these devices also being served by a carrier of the larger base station.